The Next Windows

[ed84c]

Well that's an interesting point about the sameness of modern operating systems. I think they're a long way from "perfection" though.

 

One of the interesting things about Vista is that Avalon' date=' and later the 3-D desktop engine (whatever that's called, I forget), could radically change things again. That could be very interesting.[/quote']

 

But when they reach perfection it will be exactly the same, as you can only have one perfect thing, but loads of different rubbishy things.

[Pangloss]

(grin) Yeah I've noticed this as well.

 

You know how that's spelled in a competitive environment, though, right?

 

O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-T-Y

[MulderMan]

The beta 1 for vista came out today, any members of msdn or anyone just downloaded it?

[herme3]

What I have experienced using various OS's is that for some reason all of them are starting to look alike.

 

The GUI is only a small part of an operating system. The primary concern should be compatibility. Microsoft has always been careful to make sure Windows is compatible with software. Just look at all the extra work that was put into Windows XP to make it would work with programs for older versions of Windows.

 

Windows XP is using a completely different kernel than Windows ME, and previous versions of Windows. However, Microsoft worked really hard to make sure that older programs would feel "comfortable" running on the new kernel. Most companies are too lazy to make their kernels compatible with software that was designed for other kernels.

 

I'm sure that Vista will have great compatibility with most of the existing software. It will also have new features that will allow new software to be more complex.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The GUI is only a small part of an operating system.

Take a look at the new Vista, and see how much work they put into the GUI to make it use up so much computing power.

The primary concern should be compatibility. Microsoft has always been careful to make sure Windows is compatible with software.

Actually it's the other way around. Software is made to be compatible with Windows. Back when there was only Apple and Microsoft, Apple said "only we are allowed to make programs for Macintosh" so then the entire software industry built for Windows. Then you get the situation where Windows dominates.

 

 

Most companies are too lazy to make their kernels compatible with software that was designed for other kernels.

The problem is that different kernels/OSes have different libraries and entirely different systems for memory management and graphics. You can't just change a few lines to make something compatible with several OSes, unless you use your own library that is installed on all of the OSes.

 

It will also have new features that will allow new software to be more complex.

Not exactly. It has features that allow software to be more complex, more easily. Libraries will contain all of the stuff for features, so programmers don't have to do it themselves.

[herme3]

Actually it's the other way around. Software is made to be compatible with Windows. Back when there was only Apple and Microsoft, Apple said "only we are allowed to make programs for Macintosh" so then the entire software industry built for Windows. Then you get the situation where Windows dominates.

 

That was a bad decision by Apple.

 

The problem is that different kernels/OSes have different libraries and entirely different systems for memory management and graphics. You can't just change a few lines to make something compatible with several OSes, unless you use your own library that is installed on all of the OSes.

 

Windows XP and Windows 98 use completely different kernels. However, all of my Windows 98 software works perfectly with Windows XP. This is because Microsoft took the time to add lots of extra code to the kernel. Lots of this code isn't required to run programs built for the Windows XP kernel, but Microsoft was concerned about compatibility.

[1veedo]

Normally Microsoft isn't. They make things incompatible to require users to upgrade, spening a bunch more money. I think it's funny because Open Office can save powerpoints in both 2000 and the latest version of MS powerpoint, where MS pp can only save in its current version.

 

If I'm not mistaken, it's still on the same bunch of code, but where it went to NT, the filling system adn several other parts of the OS went NTFS. So it really wasn't that drastic of a change; it was more of an alteration trying to get it more stable (for servers). Don't get me wrong, it was a pretty big change, but it wasn't as much software as it was algorithms or methods.

[Aeternus]

That was a bad decision by Apple.

 

 

 

Windows XP and Windows 98 use completely different kernels. However' date=' all of my Windows 98 software works perfectly with Windows XP. This is because Microsoft took the time to add lots of extra code to the kernel. Lots of this code isn't required to run programs built for the Windows XP kernel, but Microsoft was concerned about compatibility.[/quote']

 

Yeah, fair play to them they did put in the work to ensure backwards compatibility. The kernels arent "completely" different though, there are a hell of a lot similarities and alot of the kernel calls are probably exactly the same, however changing even small things can cause big problems for older software as it expects the calls to be a certain way and to take certain parameters etc. If even one call doesnt, bam, screwed. This isn't quite the same as a completely different operating systems kernel being compatible with Windows software however, as the other kernel will behave in a completely different manner (there is a big difference between 2 versions of windows kernels which use common interfaces and work in quite similar ways and a completely different operating system) and will have completely different calls and interfaces to begin with, so it isnt simply the case of adding compatibility for the few interfaces that will have changed.

 

Agreed, I'm sure Vista will maintain backward compatibility with older windows software. Will be fun to see it when its out. I especially hope we get to see some of the features that have been taken out come into play after launch as they were some of the most exciting.

[Klaynos]

The GUI is only a small part of an operating system. The primary concern should be compatibility. Microsoft has always been careful to make sure Windows is compatible with software. Just look at all the extra work that was put into Windows XP to make it would work with programs for older versions of Windows.

 

Windows XP is using a completely different kernel than Windows ME' date=' and previous versions of Windows. However, Microsoft worked really hard to make sure that older programs would feel "comfortable" running on the new kernel. Most companies are too lazy to make their kernels compatible with software that was designed for other kernels.

 

I'm sure that Vista will have great compatibility with most of the existing software. It will also have new features that will allow new software to be more complex.[/quote']

 

 

Sorry did you not read all the stuff about SP2 when it was released killing off software developed for windows, including in some cases stoping MS Office working properly, and completely stoping other MS softwrae.

 

Not all legacy software works with XP.

[Pangloss]

Take a look at the new Vista, and see how much work they put into the GUI to make it use up so much computing power.

 

Far be it from me to stand in the way of anybody straightening out Herme's fanboy fawnings (grin), but I did want to make the point that I think this is actually a good thing, and it's a trend shared by every other OS. Software has lagged way behind hardware in every area except for cutting-edge games, which is one of the reasons business workstations are so dirt cheap right now. Not that I'm suggesting that operating systems need to eat more CPU cycles in order to be more productive, mind you, I'm just saying that it's about freaking time the system software tried to do a little more with the power that's available.

 

 

By the way, just as a side note about legacy software, I've had some interesting experiences in that area over the years. I have one customer (a small manufacturing concern in the construction industry) who has this one ridiculous but completely mission-critical application that runs in a series of macros in Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.3 in DOS. (Hey, it works!) I've been trying for years to do something about that, but I've just never hit on the right combination of cost and benefit to convince them to bring it out of the stone ages (they're misers, what can I say).

 

Anyway, when Windows 2000 came out I discovered that their application could not run in that OS. At that point I was naturally hopeful that I would be able to use this piece of information to convince the customer that it was finally time to port the old beast, and after a year or two of convincing they were just about ready to pull the trigger, when guess what? Windows XP came out! And wouldn't you just know it? It runs this bloody old app JUST FINE! (rofl)

 

After banging my head into the pavement a few times, I finally just chalked it up to life. (chuckle)

[herme3]

Normally Microsoft isn't. They make things incompatible to require users to upgrade, spening a bunch more money.

 

Well, of course software developers are going to take advantage of the features of new operating systems. Most new applications aren't going to run on Windows 3.1 and that's because we want our new software to have more capabilities than the Windows 3.1 software.

 

Let me provide another example. Would you buy a Nintendo GameCube game with NES graphics? Probably not. Software developers like to improve their software because newer hardware and operating systems allow them to. The older operating systems aren't high-tech enough to run the new software. Microsoft never makes things incompatible to require users to upgrade.

 

However, I believe that it is important for older software to operate on newer operating systems. Windows XP did a great job with this. However, it is impossible for all older software to run on Windows XP. To allow 100% compatibility, you would need every single operating system ever made installed on your hard drive in a different partition. I imagine this would require significant hard drive space.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

You missed the point entirely.

 

Microsoft changes the file formats for Word and all their other formats just enough so that when one company upgrades, it forces everyone else to upgrade or they will not be able to open documents and presentations.

You also ignored this:

I think it's funny because Open Office can save powerpoints in both 2000 and the latest version of MS powerpoint, where MS pp can only save in its current version.

Microsoft products aren't even backwards compatible; if one company gets the product it can't save in a format that allows the others to read it properly. A FREE office product manages to save in both formats. Notice the difference.

[herme3]

You missed the point entirely.

 

Microsoft changes the file formats for Word and all their other formats just enough so that when one company upgrades' date=' it forces everyone else to upgrade or they will not be able to open documents and presentations. [/quote']

 

I'm sorry but you are completely wrong about that. I have Microsoft Word XP, and it can save in any Word format. Just click on, "Save As" and choose the format. Here is a picture that shows how you can do this:

 

[Dave]

I think his point is that people are forced to upgrade since, say, a person using Word 2000 can't open Word 2003 files without losing some of the formatting.

[Klaynos]

And for older versions it just uses rtf's which unless I'm mistaken was not their native file format, and does not support all of the functionallity they did.

[Pangloss]

Microsoft changes the file formats for Word and all their other formats just enough so that when one company upgrades, it forces everyone else to upgrade or they will not be able to open documents and presentations.

...

Microsoft products aren't even backwards compatible

 

This is not the case. I don't believe MS has made a major change in file formats (to the point of incompatibility) in Office since 1995 -- ten years ago (might've been Office 97; I'd have to check). They've added new features with each subsequent release, but the new formats only added the additional capabilities -- they were fully backward compatible.

 

Not only could new versions open the old files, but the old programs could open the output from the new programs so long as the proper save format was chosen, which has never been a problem so long as you didn't use the new features in that document.

 

Since people demand new features, surely that's the most user-friendly way they could have done it.

 

 

I think his point is that people are forced to upgrade since, say, a person using Word 2000 can't open Word 2003 files without losing some of the formatting.

 

Addressed above, but let me just add that you wouldn't lose any formatting or any product from features that were available in Word 2000.

 

In fact when going from Word 2003 to Word 2000, you wouldn't even have to select a different output format. It simply works -- any product from new features just wouldn't be visible in Word 2000.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It is my experience that if you use, for example, PowerPoint's new features, and then open it up in an older version of PowerPoint, it attempts to substitute something else for the new feature, and typically screws it up.

[Pangloss]

So getting back to the point, these statements, on an objective basis, have to be ruled inaccurate:

 

Microsoft changes the file formats for Word and all their other formats just enough so that when one company upgrades, it forces everyone else to upgrade or they will not be able to open documents and presentations.

 

Microsoft products aren't even backwards compatible; if one company gets the product it can't save in a format that allows the others to read it properly. A FREE office product manages to save in both formats. Notice the difference.

 

Both paragraphs are functionally and factually incorrect.

[Pangloss]

It is my experience that if you use, for example, PowerPoint's new features, and then open it up in an older version of PowerPoint, it attempts to substitute something else for the new feature, and typically screws it up.

 

I'm sure there could be bugs in there I'm not aware of -- no question about that. But no, that's not typically the case. For example, if you implant a bunch of Smart Tags in a PowerPoint 2003 presentation and then open the file in PowerPoint 2000, you just can't see the Smart Tags. (shrug)

 

(And there's a freely distributable viewer that would let the PP 2000 owner see 'em. This is important to MS because they're trying to go after the Acrobat market, but that's a whole 'nuther discussion.)

[Pangloss]

BTW, just as an aside, I've been teaching Office part-time since the late 1990s. I just finished teaching a class today on Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications, i.e. semi-programming for super-advanced Excel experts). So I get about 40 bucks an hour answering questions like these.

 

Not that I'm always right about this stuff, of course, as my students today were happy to point out. Bloody expert-level classes.... (rofl)

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Also, Microsoft is finally switching to an XML file format. While it may also be distributing a viewer for older versions of office, it's most likely going to cause quite a few problems until people get it sorted.

[Pangloss]

Right, which represents the first major file format change in 8 years. I meant to mention that above -- it does mean that Office 2003 apps won't be able to open those files.

 

What will likely happen is that a module will be distributed off the MS web site that allows older versions of Office to open the XML-format files. That's what they did when they went to the last "incompatible" format in 1997. They'll also have funtionality built into Office 12 (as it's presently being called in Beta) that will let the user save in good old Office 2003 formats.

 

A few problems, yes, I agree. But this is a pretty radical shift, so I think it's understandable.

 

I'd really like to hear how it's different with other office-like suites. How do they add new features without preserving the output from those new features in the saved document? Do they add it into a second file? That would seem rather odd.

 

I have used OpenOffice and I liked it just fine. I've installed it at two businesses customers I work with that were willing to try Linux (to great success). They seem happy enough with it, and I'd be happy to install it again. Whatever the customer wants, and I happily make suggestions along those lines any time I can -- the more they save, the more I make. (grin)

[1veedo]

Both paragraphs are functionally and factually incorrect.

I thought most people knew this. A quick google gave me this page. http://www.microsuck.com/content/whatsbad.shtml#backward

 

Apparently there is talk from Microsoft to make the Xbox incompatible as well. There are entire articles talking about "Why should you upgrade?" bassed around these facts.

Also contributing to Microsoft's goal of putting everybody on a perpetual upgrade cycle is the backward incompatibility in Microsoft's products. Once a small number of users adopt a new version of a Microsoft product all other users are pressured to upgrade lest they are unable to interact with files produced by the newer program.

 

* Dan Martinez summed up the situation created with the incompatibility in subsequent versions of Word when he said, "while we're on the subject of file formats, let's pause for a moment in frank admiration of the way in which Microsoft brazenly built backward-incompatibility into its product. By initially making it virtually impossible to maintain a heterogenous environment of Word 95 and Word 97 systems, Microsoft offered its customers that most eloquent of arguments for upgrading: the delicate sound of a revolver being cocked somewhere just out of sight." (cited from the quote file) For a more detailed lament of how Microsoft likes to pressure its customers to keep buying the same product over and over by using backward incompatibility, see Zeid Nasser's page on "Forced upgrading," in the World of Word.

A more in depth look can be found here, http://www.rje.org/main/sample_articles/ellison_00.pdf

[Pangloss]

Again, they're *not* backwards "incompatible". In what way are the current versions of Office, or any version of Office for the last 8 years, incompatible with earlier versions? How is Office different from, say, OpenOffice in this respect?

 

These are simple questions, and if your popular mantra is true, then you ought to be able to answer them.

[1veedo]

Well, of course software developers are going to take advantage of the features of new operating systems. Most new applications aren't going to run on Windows 3.1 and that's because we want our new software to have more capabilities than the Windows 3.1 software.

This isn’t what I’m talking about. If software from ME didn’t run on XP, then people wouldn’t upgrade.

Again' date=' they're *not* backwards "incompatible". In what way are the current versions of Office, or any version of Office for the last 8 years, incompatible with earlier versions? How is Office different from, say, OpenOffice in this respect?[/quote']Word will not save in earlier versions of itself. I’m looking, right now, at the ability to save in RTF but this isn’t the same thing. It can also save in Word Perfect 5 and that’s about it. OO has two different files of itself (text and text document), plus the ability to save in other formats.

I'm sure there could be bugs in there I'm not aware of -- no question about that. But no, that's not typically the case. For example, if you implant a bunch of Smart Tags in a PowerPoint 2003 presentation and then open the file in PowerPoint 2000, you just can't see the Smart Tags. (shrug)

PP 2000 is not compatible with 2004 or any earlier versions of itself. I know this because last year we had to make a power point for English and almost nobody's power point would open. No, “Well this was supposed to do something cool but didn’t.” It just simply wouldn’t open them. Period. The few lucky people that had version 2000 was able to get their’s opened. I was lucky because I had OO save mine in both 2000 and XP. When we tried to get XP power points opened by 2000, it actually told us that we needed to upgrade our current software! When we tried older versions, it just said that it was an incompatible file type. Maybe 2000 will open 2003, but it’s probably the other way around (ie, 2003 will open 2000). If 2000 does open 2003 but nothing else, only God knows why...We were going to go to one of the newer computer labs for everybody with XP at home (giving people with <2000 a buy), but here’s the funny part:

 

I ended up taking home all the power points that wouldn’t play to make them compatible with 2000. If Open Office can open a 2004 power point and save it as 2000 then so can Microsoft. MS, on the other hand, decided not to. So don’t try to tell me that PP is simi-compatible with other versions, because I know better. Of course, they didn’t keep all their functionality, but at least they could be opened after I converted them.

 

I’m not saying that Microsoft always does this, but another item on the incompatibility list is their databases program (access?). The irony here is that there is a program that will convert between the latest database and the others.

 

Between 95, 6.0, and 97, Microsoft maligned their own formatting standards so Word Perfect couldn’t save as their file type. To be fair, WP did the same thing to Word. The difference is that WP was still computable with other versions. Word was not. So for every $50 made by WP, Word made 150 due to upgrade costs. That’s like changing <a> to <s> in IE, it’s just unacceptable. MS even admitted to this once. My mom uses 98 upstairs, with 97 office and if we want it to be read on XP, we have to open it in WP. It’s kind of funny, actually.

 

Anyway, I think Windows 2006 will be compatible software wise with XP, but the next office probably wont. Just like the current one, you can open an older Word document, but it wont let you save it that way. “Your document will be saved as whatever file type. [ok]” (try it, that’s the message you’ll get) This is exactly what I was talking about at the beginning of the post. If Word wouldn’t open XP then nobody would upgrade. But once everybody upgrades, XP will become incompatible because you wont be able to save in anything but RTF, just like right now you can save in RTF 2000/97. The problem is that RTF doesn’t convert very well. Microsoft does this on purpose. Bold, underline, italics go away. No double spacing, or any formating. Instead of tabs, spaces between paragraphs. No headers. And parenthesis, quotes, etc, turn into weird looking symbols. It’s almost like you copied the document into notepad and saved it, except by pasting it in notepad, at least the quotes and parenthesis stay in tact.

 

I actually think that MS will stop all this nonsense when they start loosing their control of the market, but right now they can get away with it.

 

Hey, you guys were talking about XML above...does this mean that I can save a document from Koffice as XML and Word will read it? If so, then MS may already be realizing that they cant keep doing this.